Postcard Passports!

The postcard project has gotten off to a great start. The first week back from vacation, my mailbox was bustling with cards from Japan (thanks Dan!), Poland (thanks Yagil!), Switzerland (thanks Cousin Mary’s friend!), and Croatia (thanks Vanessa and Brian!)! Add to that collection my postcard to my students from Fiji, and we have five different countries already! To top it off, we received a package from a class in Atlanta, Georgia filled with letters and postcards, too! Thanks Wendy!

I began the project by introducing my students to the idea of postcard writing: brief, short notes about yourself and the country or place you happen to be writing from. Next, we took out the cards, one per day, and discussed the make up of a postcard: sender, recipient, postage stamps, etc. Finally, we began interactive lessons using the cards for reading, writing responses, and vocabulary enhancement.

Ever evolving, the program is now moving towards social studies and geography. I had the students make passports, and now every time a card comes in, we look up it’s country of origin in our Student Atlas, and the students must enter the country name, capital city, continent, and draw a picture of the countries flag. There are 23 students in my class, and once we reach 23 countries, we will do our very own “Parade of Nations,” where each student will represent a country and will do a small research project on their assigned country. It is really exciting to see this project evolve (so quickly!) and I find myself eagerly awaiting every trip to the post office. Thanks again to all who have participated so far!